Since its inception in 1995, the Java programming language has become increasingly popular. Java, which is an interpreted language, enabled the creation of applications which could be run on a wide variety of platforms. This ability to function across a variety of different client platforms and Java's relatively easy implementation of network applications has resulted in its use in endeavors as basic as personal webpages to endeavors as complex as large business-to-business enterprise systems.
As Java has become more commonplace, a wide variety of tools and development platforms have been created to assist developers in the creation and implementation of Java applications and portals, which provide a way to aggregate content and integrate applications, allowing a visitor to a Web site to access everything via a user interface.
One ongoing need has been the ability for providers of web applications to prepare functional content that can be implemented through outside sites. Often providers will wish to offer web services without setting up the front-end interface elements that are necessary to implement the web services.
The Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) standard by the OASIS group has enabled the delivery of functional applications from producer sites to consumer sites. However, the implementation of WSRP has presented considerable difficulties.
Additionally, current implementations of WSRP are somewhat difficult to configure. An administrator of a consumer system must obtain configuration information for a portlet and a producer and a submit the information to a configuration utility. Doing so often requires a prohibitively high level of expertise for a user of a consumer system. What is needed is an improved interface for configuring consumer systems to utilize remote portlets.